


Ghost

by Inkandquills, writersstudy



Series: Inktober 2019 [22]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Beaten to Death, Broken Neck, Bullying, Character Death, Child Death, Death, Drowning, Electrocution, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Qian Kun - Freeform, Sleepwalking, blunt force trauma, in the first ch, jeno lowkey keeps murdering people, mentions of ouija boards, mentions of paganism, ouija board wikihow video plays ominously in the background, references to beetlejuice, twice technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 20:31:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21142766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkandquills/pseuds/Inkandquills, https://archiveofourown.org/users/writersstudy/pseuds/writersstudy
Summary: Inktober 2019, Day Twenty-Two!Prompt: GhostGroup: NCT DreamPairing: N/AA: This was their home and it was the adults who always tried to ruin it.M: The Dream dorm has a not-so-surprise visitor.[[PLEASE NOTE THAT WE, THE AUTHORS, HAVE NOT GIVEN PERMISSION FOR THIS WORK TO BE RE-POSTED ANYWHERE EXCEPT DIRECTLY ON AO3. IF YOU SEE THIS WORK ANYWHERE ELSE, PLEASE REPORT IT FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND NOTIFY US AT LIVING.LENIENTLY@GMAIL.COM. THANK YOU.]]





	1. Ashlee

Just outside the town of Kkum, there is a hill. On top of the hill sits a house. The house is run down and rickety, left uninhabited for years. The townspeople claim the house is cursed. Every family that has lived there has lost a child and many say that the children are still there, haunting the house. 

The Lee family was the first to lose a child to the house. Lee Jeno was a happy boy, always willing to make friends and run errands for the neighbors. He would spend his days running back and forth from the market to help his mother and their neighbors. When he wasn’t doing that, he was at the pond on the property, fishing for dinner. One afternoon, Jeno went to the pond, intent on finding dinner for the evening. However, the sky soon darkened and the wind picked up, whipping around him as it started to pour. He ran for cover under a nearby tree, deciding to wait it out until the rain lightened enough for him to see his way out. Jeno didn’t make it home that night. The next morning, his father found his body trapped under a fallen tree, still and cold. The family moved out not long after that.

A few months after the Lee family left, the Na family moved in. They had one son, a boy named Jaemin. He was a quiet child, not nearly as adventurous or social as the boy who lived there before him. Where Jeno was happy to visit with his neighbors and run errands for anyone, Jaemin would have much rather sit inside and read a book. No one even knew that the Na’s had a son until they sent him to school in the fall. Even then, he kept to himself and hardly made friends, much too shy to do anything but keep his head down. Early one spring morning, neighbors awoke to screams coming from the Na home. Poor Jaemin had been found at the bottom of the stairs, neck cracked and eyes glassy. Rumors had it that Jeno had pushed him, wanting a playmate that couldn’t leave. Jaemin was buried and the Nas left town.

The house stood empty for about a year before the Parks moved in. Their son, Jisung, was a prodigy. Not only was he years advanced in school, but he was also musically gifted and a published author. Despite all of this, he managed to also be well adjusted socially and make friends at school that were his own age, despite being a few grades ahead of them. Unfortunately, it meant that the people he did share classes with weren’t as kind. He would frequently come home with dirt on his clothes and bruises on his arms from fending off bullies. One afternoon, he came home covered in bruises. There had been more bullies than usual that day and he hadn’t been able to fend them all off. The next morning, his mother found him dead in his bed. The doctors told her that his brain had swollen and bled from the trauma to his skull, slowly killing him in his sleep. She didn’t know the names of any of Jisung’s bullies and instead moved out, taking him back to Seoul to be buried with family.

After the Parks left, it wasn’t long before the Huangs moved in. Huang Renjun was another one that kept to himself, but not because he was shy. No, Renjun was outspoken and snarky, but it often backfired on him when he couldn’t hold his tongue. He kept away from others so that no one would see the bruising that often covered his face and arms. It was because of Renjun that the rumors about ghosts in the house truly began to circulate. His father was a drunk and would sit in the local bar complaining about how he always woke up to the giggles of children and how he couldn’t even go near his son without suddenly feeling like he was being doused in ice water. It was just him and the boy in the house, his wife having died a few years earlier, and it wasn’t long before the townspeople became suspicious of the way the man treated his son. In the wee hours of one morning, neighbors were awakened by banshee screams from the house on the hill. Police were called and found Renjun beaten to death on his bedroom floor. His father’s body was in the hallway. There were scrapes in the wood and splinters under his nails, as if he’d been dragged away by his feet. Police hadn’t been able to get near Renjun’s body for days, always rebuffed by some invisible barrier, until they announced to the empty house that they would take care of him and bury him properly.

The house sat empty for a long time after the death of the Huangs. Realtors refused to even list it, knowing no one would purchase a home with a clear haunting. However, that changed when the Lees came to town. Renowned inner-city investors, they were looking for a property to find and flip into a housing complex. The purchased the house on the hill for mere pennies, moving into the home temporarily while they finalized demolition and construction plans. They were warned about the ghosts, but they paid the warnings no heed. Country bumpkins, they said, always so superstitious. The Lees had a son by the name of Donghyuck, who was a very interesting boy to say the least. He was loud and sassy, but also incredibly devout in his religious pledge to a goddess of death. His parents largely ignored what they considered his antics, merely dismissing him when he tried to tell him that the rumors about the ghosts were true and that the boys were not happy with their plans. Rather than being concerned, they chose to leave the original house intact as an attraction, to make money off of the dead boys. Donghyuck tried everything to convince his parents not to go through with it, but they simply didn’t care. In desperation, he turned to the boys as his parents left for their final permit approval meeting. Jeno simply asked if Donghyuck trusted them, which he did without a doubt, even as they held him down in the bathtub. The permits were denied, as the committee stated the house was too dangerous for anyone to live in if the ghosts were willing to murder to get what they wanted. The Lees left town after that, trying their tricks somewhere else.

The house sat abandoned after that, with not a single soul daring to venture near. It fell into disrepair, but no one was brave enough to attempt a demolition. After a while, the events there started to fall out of recent memory. The house just became another dilapidated building in a town that was slowly falling to ruin. It was almost a miracle when the Zhong family moved to town and no one hesitated in selling them the house on the hill, so long as they were moving in somewhere in town. They had a young son, Chenle, a curious boy. It took less than a week from the Zhongs settling in to hurriedly moving out, after the boy curiously poked the end of a spoon into a socket, blowing all the fuses in the house and electrocuting himself in the process. It was something his parents claimed he’d never attempted to do before, that they didn’t even know where he got a metal spoon from. The house was truly haunted, they said, and it was time to leave the boys to rest. 

The Zhongs didn’t sell the property, instead moving to another house closer to town and hiring a caretaker. Qian Kun moved into the downstairs bedroom and simply puttered around, keeping the house in good repair and staying out of the boys’ way. They left him be, content so long as he didn’t interfere with them. As time progressed, they slowly became comfortable with him, revealing themselves and acting as a true set of brothers with their quietly humble dad. A few years into living at the house, Kun asked them all to gather in the living room and said that he had a request. He’d been tasked with caring for his sister’s sons over the summer while she and her husband travelled for work. For weeks, he’d been trying to find other accommodations for the three of them so they wouldn’t destroy the certain balance that he and the boys had, but he’d come up empty. Would the boys mind his nephews joining them for a few months, he asked. He’d make sure they respected the boundaries the seven of them had been living by, he said. He refused to send them to stay with his parents, he said, the horrible traditionalists that they were. To his surprise and relief, none of the boys seemed nervous about his nephews at all. They agreed easily. The problem had never been the sons, Jeno said, it had always been the parents. This was their home and it was the adults who always tried to ruin it. The children, on the other hand, would always be welcome. 

A week later, when Kun arrived home with Yangyang, Dejun, and Kunhang in tow, they kept their word. Jeno and the boys would always take care of them.


	2. Michelle

Jeno was a light sleeper. He had been his whole life. Which meant every little bump and creak in the night woke him up and his brain wouldn’t let him go back to bed until he investigated. So when one of the floorboards in their room creaked in the middle of the night, Jeno found himself lying awake in bed hands clenched around his blanket. He tried his best to breathe quietly so he could hear any other noises. But now the room was silent, save for the gentle breathing of his roommates. Now that he was awake he couldn’t go back to sleep so he carefully climbed out of bed and went into the kitchen to get some water. He tip-toed through the dorm room and looked around every corner before continuing but there was nothing there. The kitchen was just as they had left it when they went to bed. He was still on edge even as he scurried back through the dorm and into his bed. He rushed across the room and settled into bed, panting quietly. When he was sure there were no more noises, he laid back down and went to bed. 

The next morning, Jeno was awake before everyone else and he did a thorough investigation of his room and the kitchen and there was simply nothing astray. He didn’t have time to worry about it before everyone else started waking up and joining him. If he asked about the creaky floorboard in his room, they would all just say he was crazy. He was taking a sip of his orange juice when he was suddenly smacked in the back of the head. He nearly spit his drink out and scrambled for a napkin to catch the liquid dribbling down his chin.

“What was that for?” he asked when he could finally talk. He rubbed the back of his head and pouted. 

“You woke me up at like two thirty this morning!” Renjun said, “why’d you run across the room when you came back in?” Jeno pouted and crossed his arms.

“‘Cause I wanted to bother you,” he lied, “Sungie was I even that loud?” The younger boy shook his head.

“I didn’t hear you,” he said, voice still gravelly since he wasn’t fully awake.

“I heard you all the way in my room,” Jaemin added. Renjun rolled his eyes and went to find some breakfast in the fridge. 

“You did not!” Jeno argued.

“Okay, maybe not last night but I did hear you the night before,” Jaemin said.

“And the night before that,” Renjun called over his shoulder. Jeno threw his hands up in defeat.

“Can’t I just drink my orange juice in peace?” he asked, hesitantly taking another sip. 

“When you stop waking me up,” Renjun said. Jeno huffed and rested his head in his hands. Soon enough they had all eaten breakfast and Chenle and Donghyuck had joined them so they were ready to head to the practice room. Thankfully the rest of the boys seemed to forget about last night and they were actually able to have some fun at rehearsal. Johnny brought them lunch around one and stayed with them for a little while to eat before going back upstairs to his own practice. That night when they finally finished, Donghyuck followed them back to the dorm, while Chenle opted to go to his apartment for the night. 

“So where am I gonna sleep?” Donghyuck asked once everyone was showered and changed. 

“Not in my room that’s for sure,” Jaemin said.

“Hey, you brat, you’re not gonna show some respect for your guest?” Donghyuck snarked.

“Nope,” Jaemin said, popping the p. Donghyuck lunged at him but Jaemin quickly ducked into his room and shut and locked the door before the boy could grab him.

“Na Jaemin, you will regret this in the morning,” Donghyuck growled through the door. He spun around the face the rest of the boys. 

“Alright, whose bed am I taking?” he asked, arms crossed.

“Nose goes,” Jeno said, immediately reaching up to touch a finger to his nose. Renjun was a split second behind him leaving Jisung standing there looking slightly lost.

“You’re it, kid,” Jeno said, reaching a hand up to ruffle Jisung’s hair. 

“I’ll just sleep on the couch,” the younger boy said with a shrug. He pushed Jeno’s hand away and went to flop down on the couch. Donghyuck waltzed into the bedroom and flopped down in Jeno’s bed. 

“Hey, that’s not Jisung’s bed!” Jeno said. He grabbed the older boy and tried to pull him out of bed but Donghyuck was not having it. He kicked at Jeno until the boy surrendered and went to go sleep in Jisung’s bed.

“You’re never staying with us again,” he grumbled as he climbed the ladder and flopped down in the lofted bed. Jeno always fell asleep quickly after days they were in the practice room, but he didn’t always stay asleep. He rolled over with a groan, fully intent on going back to sleep when he heard it, a noise coming from the kitchen. His eyes flew open and he knew he wouldn’t get any sleep until he went to investigate. Slowly he climbed out of bed, being extra careful not to wake his roommates up and snuck into the kitchen. He looked all around but not a single thing was touched. That didn’t make sense. He was sure he had heard something. Jeno waited a few moments, not sure if it would be better or worse if something started moving. When nothing happened, he sighed and scurried back to bed. Just as he was about to close the door, one the cabinet doors slammed in the kitchen. He gasped and quickly shut the door behind him before racing across the room and up the ladder back into bed. He scrambled under the covers and pulled them up to his chin and laid stock still, anxiously waiting for any more noise but there was nothing. He didn’t sleep very well the rest of the night, only managing to doze off here and there. 

The following morning, Jeno was woken up with a pillow to the face.

“What? Why? What was that for?” he asked with a gasp. When his vision cleared, he saw Renjun standing on the ladder with a pillow in his hand and a disgruntled look on his face.

“You woke me up again!” he said, starting to beat Jeno with the pillow. The younger boy threw his hands up in defense against the barrage he was under.

“I didn’t mean to! I was coming back from the kitchen and something slammed and I got scared,” Jeno mumbled in a small voice.

“Got scared? Really? Of a noise? It was probably just Jisung getting a snack,” Renjun said climbing down. 

“Fine, I’ll go ask him,” Jeno said with a huff. He climbed down and went into the living room to find Jisung still asleep on the couch. A glance into the kitchen, revealed a glass that was definitely not there when he had come into the kitchen earlier. He shook the younger boy awake and stood above him with his arms crossed.

“Hyung? What’s going on?” Jisung asked, still half asleep. 

“Did you go into the cabinet to get a drink last night and leave the glass on the counter?” Jeno asked.

“No,” Jisung mumbled, rolling over so he could go back to sleep. Jeno huffed and waited for Jaemin to make an appearance so he could ask the boy the same question.

“Nah, man. I don’t get up and make a ruckus in the middle of the night,” he replied. Jeno huffed and looked back at the glass.

“Looks like you guys got a ghost,” Donghyuck said as he waltzed into the room.

“A g-ghost?” Jeno asked in a small voice. 

“What a little ghosty got you scared?” Donghyuck teased. 

“No,” Jeno said, trying to act brave.

“Maybe we should do a ouija board to try and talk to it. Ask it to leave our kitchen alone, it’s messy enough,” Jaemin said.

“Absolutely not,” Jeno said just as Donghyuck readily agreed. 

“We don’t have a ouija board to use even if we wanted to and we’re going to be late to practice if we don’t get a move on,” Renjun said. He walked over to the couch and shook Jisung awake before moving the lone glass into the sink. The rest of the day was once again uneventful but Jeno spent the whole time on edge. Could their dorm really be haunted? No that was ridiculous. Or was it?

That night Jeno forced himself to remain in bed, despite all of the noise coming from the kitchen. In the morning they found another glass on the table, this time half full of orange juice. Everyone denied leaving it out and sent Jeno into even more of a panic. This continued for the rest of the week, with various aspects of their kitchen in disrepair every morning. From glasses strewn about, to half empty chip bags laying on the counter, even to dirty dishes ending up in the sink. 

One night, Jeno had had enough. He staked out on the couch underneath a pile of blankets and kept his eye on the kitchen. The minutes slowly turned into hours and Jeno was starting to get sleepy. His head would slowly start to droop only for him to jump awake at the smallest noise. Suddenly footsteps sounded from down the hallway, almost as if they were coming from the bedrooms. Jeno pulled the blanket tight around himself and watched the door frame with wide eyes. Hopefully the ghost wouldn’t notice him watching. He sat stock still, not even daring to breathe, as the footsteps got closer and closer. He bit the inside of his lip and squeezed his eyes shut just as the footsteps reached the kitchen. And then there was silence. Jeno’s eyes flew open and he gasped and nearly fell off the couch when he saw Jisung standing in the doorway looking dazed.

“Sung? What are you doing? You nearly gave me a heart attack!” Jeno said as he unwrapped himself from the blanket and stood up. Jisung jumped a mile and blinked his eyes a few times.

“Hyung? What are you doing awake?” he asked.

“I was trying to catch the ghost that keeps messing up our kitchen,” Jeno replied, “What are you doing out here?” Jisung peered around the older boy and was confused to see them standing in the entrance to the kitchen.

“I don’t know? I-I don’t remember walking out here,” the younger boy said quietly. Jeno’s eyes widened.

“It’s you! You’re the ghost that keeps messing everything up!” Jeno said, completely relieved that their dorm wasn’t actually haunted. 

“Me? But I haven’t been moving anything,” Jisung defended. Jeno grabbed the younger boys hand and dragged him back down the hallway.

“You’ve been sleep walking. That’s why you don’t remember doing any of it and that’s why we haven’t figured out who it was ‘cause you usually sleep on the couch so you’ve been back asleep before I get in here,” Jeno explained. Jisung nodded. That seemed to make sense. He didn’t realize he had started sleeping walking though.

“Are you going to tell the other boys?” he asked quietly.

“Absolutely not,” Jeno replied with a smirk. 


End file.
